How the Spiderman of Paris Vjeran Tomic pulled off 100 million euro art heist - Manchester Evening News
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How the Spiderman of Paris Vjeran Tomic pulled off 100 million euro art heist
By Ellie Kemp - 13:40, 20 OCT 2023
One of France's most prolific art thieves has revealed how he pulled off France's biggest art heist in the latest Netflix true crime documentary, The Spiderman Of Paris.
Vjeran Tomic stole five pieces of art from the Paris Museum of Modern Art in 2010. He was dubbed the Spiderman of Paris thanks to the parkour-style climbing skills he used to scale large buildings, including apartments, to help him steal.
Vjeran himself features in the hour and a half film, which released on Netflix on Friday October 20. Here's how he pulled off such a huge feat and stole five iconic paintings - which to this day have never been recovered.
Vjeran was born in Paris in 1968, but soon moved to Bosnia to live with his grandma. While living there, he committed his first theft at 10 years old.
The youngster climbed through a library window and stole two books, which were later returned. As he grew older, he began stealing from affluent neighbours and eventually found he had a flair for scaling multi-story buildings.
In 2000, the self-proclaimed art lover used a crossbow, ropes and a caribiner to break into an apartment to steal two Renoirs, a Derain, an Utrillo, a Braque and other works of art, worth more than a million euros.
A decade later, at the age of 49, he pulled off France's biggest art heist, stealing more than 100 million euros worth of paintings from the Paris Museum of Modern Art. He first noticed the building while walking near the River Seine.
Something stood out to him; one of the museum's windows was blocked from the security cameras view. After scratching away the paint on the window's metal frame, Vjeran believed he could unscrew it and gain entry without getting caught.
A couple of days later, he visited the museum. Inside, he spotted motion detectors which were meant to change from green to red when someone walked by. However not all of them appeared to be working.
With all this in mind, on May 14 2010 he put his plan into action. It took him six nights to strip and unscrew the window. He finally removed the window on May 20, entered the museum and dodged the known working motion detectors.
He then retreated to the banks of the Seine to see if he'd triggered any alarms. He hadn't, so he returned and headed for Fernand Léger’s Still Life with Candlestick.
When the alarm didn't trigger, he decided to steal another four: Pastoral by Henri Matisse, Woman with a Fan by Modigliani, Pablo Picasso's Dove with Green Peas and George Braques Olive Tree near Estaque.
It took Vjeran two trips to carry all the canvases out of the museum. To this day, they've never been recovered.
In an interview with the New Yorker, the French native revealed he almost stole a sixth painting: Amedeo Modigliani's Woman with Blue Eyes. He told the publication: “When I went to get it off the wall, it told me, ‘If you take me, you will regret it the rest of your life.’
"I will never forget what this ‘Woman with Blue Eyes’ did to me. When I touched it, to take it out of its frame . . . the feeling started instantly—a fear that came over me like an iceberg, a freezing fear that made me run away.”
In 2011, Vjeran was arrested and admitted to the heist. He told police he took the paintings because he 'liked' them. In February 2017 he was sentenced to eight years in prison. He and his two accomplices were fined 104 million euros for the thefts.
Vjeran Tomic: The Spiderman of Paris is streaming now on Netflix.